CMOs: Adapt Your Social Media Strategy for a Post-Pandemic

World
By: Kevin Batalla

There is no doubt that the pandemic has come to change the world. Social Media has
been potentiated by the lockdown in a lot of countries due to more people that spend
time on the internet. Now, that said, social media has never been more powerful as a
marketing tool, and companies are aware of that. To make the most of it, chief
marketing officers (CMOs) and marketing managers nowadays, especially due to the
now Post-Pandemic world, must consider how the marketing landscape has changed in
the past year — and plan their marketing strategies accordingly for the future. How to
adapt your social media strategy for Post-Pandemic World? In this article, summarized
and starting from the paper of Christine Moorman – Professor at Duke University where
she is a member of the marketing area and founder and managing director of The CMO
Survey- and Torren McCarthy – Co-writer and marketing professional, we'll learn 10
recommendations (based on a recent survey of present-day CMO sentiments) to
marketers who are looking to maximize returns on their social media investments, as
well as few important things to keep in mind when working with social media.

Therefore, in this article, we will see points such as:

 The CMO Survey results on Social Media

 Social Media in marketing. How can marketing leaders build upon this growing
trend and plan their social media marketing strategies for a post-pandemic
future? 10 key recommendations
 1. Run formal experiments
 2. Play with new channels and features on existing platforms
 3. Integrate social media strategy into your overall marketing strategy
 4. Invest in top social media talent
 5. Ensure agile social media management
 6. Harness the power of influencers and creators
 7. Carefully consider the right platform(s) for your Brand
 8. Reduce friction between social media and e-commerce platforms
 9. Adapt your creative content to the times
 10. Take care to select and onboard the right agency partners
 Final thoughts

The CMO Survey results on Social Media

Let's start with some important facts and numbers. The COVID-19 Special Edition of
The CMO Survey, article for Harvard Business Review, reported the following:
“Social media spending has increased from 13.3% of marketing budgets in February
2020 to 23.2% in June 2020 — a 74% lift. Meanwhile, spending on traditional
advertising is projected to decline, as CMOs estimate a 5.3% reduction in traditional
advertising channels in the next 12 months.
Companies are seeing a historic return on their social media investments, according to
the survey. The self-reported contribution of social media to overall company
performance has risen sharply, up 24% since February 2020. This is an important
finding because, despite steadily rising investments social media, the impact of social
media has remained relatively flat since 2016.
CMOs anticipate that social media investments will remain high at 23.4% of marketing
budgets into 2021. Along with this, CMOs are increasingly investing in online customer
experiences: 60.8% of CMOs indicated they have “shifted resources to building
customer-facing digital interfaces” and 56.2% planning to “transform their go-to-market
business models to focus on digital opportunities.” It is clear that social media will
continue to play an important role in driving consumers toward digital offerings”.

What can be extracted and interpreted from the survey is the importance of social media
and that it will continue to play an important role in driving consumers toward digital
offerings. As can be seen, the budget for social media increased compared to the
traditional advertising budget, which, on the contrary, is projected to keep declining.

Social Media in marketing. How can marketing leaders

build upon this growing trend and plan their social
media marketing strategies for a post-pandemic
future? 10 key recommendations
Marketing has evolved since its inception. Currently, Social Media Marketing is a new
player in this field of Digital Marketing where brands and consumers face each other.
But what is social media marketing? Well, it is a series of tools that, when put into
action, open different communication channels in the digital world. The key to all the
concepts is that Social Media Marketing refers to the strategic creation of a new
communication channel with a 100% digital audience. Those customers who have gone
from being just a consumer entity to become an audience, with opinions of such great
value and weight on the web that they can make a campaign successful or destroy it in
an instant. This is how Social Media Marketing was born; the answer to the search for a
new communication path to relate brands and products with each and every Internet
user who surfs the web daily.

Now, knowing what social media marketing consists of, and the relevance that it has
taken especially in this post-pandemic society. How can marketing leaders build upon
this growing trend and plan their social media marketing strategies for a post-pandemic
future? Well, you can start by taking into account these 10 key recommendations.

1. Run formal experiments

With experimentation, achieving successes, and learning from mistakes, success is
achieved. And that couldn't be any more true. Nevertheless, the Special Edition of the
CMO Survey found a high level of marketing improvisation during the pandemic, with
CMOs reporting an average 5.6 out of 7 (where 1 represents “not at all” and 7
represents “a great deal”). Despite this, survey results also document a decrease in
formal experimentation on social platforms, with only 31% of marketers reporting that
they conducted experiments to understand the impact of their marketing actions during
the pandemic, and only 29% of marketers reporting that they invested resources into
building research and experimentation capabilities.

These statistics indicate that marketers are implementing new, improvised strategies
frequently, but without fully understanding their effects. They need to correct this trend
in 2021: Social media platforms provide excellent opportunities to test new brand
messaging, advertisements, and offerings — and to receive direct measurable feedback
from target consumers. Marketers must use these tools to learn.

2. Play with new channels and features on existing

platforms
Technology, the internet, and platforms keep evolving fast year after year. Social media
strategists should always be aware of what’s new on existing platforms. For example,
Instagram Reels, which launched this past summer, provides a new channel to deliver
the short-form video style that has swept the internet. Facebook’s gift cards or TikTok
For Business, which were also released earlier this year, are similar examples. These
new tools provide an opportunity to build a unique connection with consumers, who
will associate their discovery of these features with the brands that first use them. A
strong social media marketing strategy will include a process for identifying new
features and channels and quickly creating content for them.

3. Integrate social media strategy into your overall

marketing strategy
According to CMO Survey, in August 2019 reported that social media is not well
integrated with marketing strategies (scoring 4.2 on 7-point scale where 1 represents
“not at all integrated” and 7 represents “very integrated”). Although a slight
improvement from past surveys, this number is still too low to produce adequate returns
on social media investments — and far too low for an expenditure that comprises nearly
a quarter of marketing budgets. As social media takes center stage in a post-pandemic
marketing world, it needs to integrate more seamlessly with the firm’s broader
marketing strategy. Because social media is the current bright light, CMOs should
ensure their social media strategy directly aligns with the overall marketing strategy to
maximize the benefits produced by these synergies.

4. Invest in top social media talent

Social media managers are now being asked to manage a costly and highly effective
piece of the marketing budget and to take on a role that often requires wearing multiple
hats (copywriter, graphic designer, customer service rep, etc.). So marketing leaders
need to think carefully about who should fill this key position. While the best social
media managers can have a positive impact, an inexperienced or unqualified one could
be detrimental to a company’s brand. The national average salary for social media
managers is $50,500, according to Glassdoor, which seriously lags the average
compensation for the positions they often serve in: copywriters average $58,500,
marketing managers average $65,500, and ad managers average $71,000. To get top
talent in this area, compensation must meet the increasing value of the role.

5. Ensure agile social media management

2020 has shown just how quickly the social media landscape can change. Recognizing
this, CMOs ranked the “ability to pivot as new priorities emerge” as the top skill they
look for in marketing talent. So, when it comes to social media management, CMOs
must ensure that talent, processes, and agency partners are prepared to respond to and
capitalize on these sudden changes. Organizations willing to re-evaluate their social
media strategies in a rapidly changing landscape will minimize risk and maximize the
opportunity to connect with consumers. (To that end, a recent Journal of Marketing
article highlights how real-time shifts in social media activities generate more virality
online).

6. Harness the power of influencers and creators

The allocation of marketing budgets towards influencers is on the rise, up to 7.5% from
6.5% a year ago and expected to rise to 12.7% in the next three years. As online traffic
continues to increase, it will be critical for brands to identify the right influencers to
attract target customers and identify growth segments. It will also be important for
social media managers to invest in influencer training and relationship building;
Influencers are a great way to build trust and authentic relationships with followers, who
may end up being paying customers. Scheduling individual and group touchpoints with
influencers to discuss product updates and gain feedback on trends they are observing
will go a long way toward fostering a mutually beneficial partnership.
7. Carefully consider the right platform(s) for your
brand
CMOs have consistently ranked brand building as their top use for social media, so it is
important to consider how the platform you choose impacts consumers’ perception of
your brand. In the special edition survey, consumers indicated that a “trusting
relationship” is most important to them in a brand (beating out low price, product
quality, and even innovation). So always consider how the policies of social media
platforms (as they relate to privacy and hate speech, in particular) may undermine
consumers’ trust.

8. Reduce friction between social media and e-

commerce platforms
To make online shopping easy, social media managers must ensure a smooth process of
funneling consumers from social media to their e-commerce site. A bad user experience
in this area can lead to lost sales; a good one can boost them. So as new digital tools are
developed, social media teams must insist upon frequent collaboration with
development teams to ensure a smooth customer journey from mobile-app and social
sites to your company’s e-commerce site.

9. Adapt your creative content to the times

It is important for brands to keep creative content relevant to the current Covid-19
reality, whatever that may be. For example, a social media post that portrays a brand at
a large, indoor gathering of people could be ignored by consumers who perceive it as
outdated — or worse, insensitive. On the other end of the spectrum, many consumers
are fatigued from content that centers around the virus. To resonate with followers,
social media content must a balance. A good example of this is the Stella Artois
Staycation Swap, a contest that matches would-be travelers who had planned trips to
each other’s cities that were canceled due to Covid-19 to swap itineraries on
TripAdvisor for an all-expenses-paid staycation instead.

10. Take care to select and onboard the right agency

partners
CMO Survey results from February 2020 indicate that 24.1% of companies' social
media activities are now performed by outside agencies — an increase from 17.4% in
2014. As agency partners become an increasingly important part of the business,
selecting, training, and building a strong relationship with these partners is crucial.

Final Thoughts
As we have been able to appreciate, there is no doubt that given the new situation
worldwide, social media has been increasing in importance for companies, which is why
marketers must know how to carry out social media marketing strategies. As the Covid-
19 pandemic pushes consumers to spend more time online, social media becomes an
increasingly important part of the connection between brands and their customers - both
existing ones and potentially new ones. For that reason, now is the time to invest in
building an integrated and agile social media management function to adapt to the new
landscape.

This article was a summary and was used as a starting point for the article by Christine
Moorman and Torren McCarthy, for Harvard Business Review (which I invite you to
read). All of this, added with my own thoughts, was intended to help readers understand
what social media marketing is all about, the new realities of the post-pandemic world,
and how to adapt your social media strategy for a post-pandemic world.